India’s COVID-19 Surge Terrifies Pakistan

By Jalal Baig

A dangerous third wave is threatening an unvaccinated nation.

For Pakistanis, a simple glance across the eastern border is a jarring reminder of how quickly a COVID-19 surge can become an apocalypse. India is now registering more than half of the world’s daily COVID-19 infections—and the real total may be far higher, as many cases and deaths remain uncounted.

India’s second COVID-19 wave has left much of its population breathless and its healthcare system in ashes. There are dire shortages of oxygen, medicine, and hospital beds, while funeral pyres of the dead burn endlessly. “This is not a second wave in India as much as it is a whole new pandemic,” said Zulfiqar Bhutta, the founding director of the Institute for Global Health & Development at Aga Khan University in Karachi.

This is ringing alarm bells in Pakistan, which is also experiencing an uptick in cases. The country had 6,127 infections on April 17, the highest figure since last June 20. While the test positivity rate is very high—a sign of inadequate testing and uncontrolled viral spread—in major cities like Karachi and Lahore, areas throughout Pakistan’s four provinces (such as Gujranwala, Mardan, Hyderabad, and Quetta) are also reporting high rates.

The impact is already obvious. Pakistan’s hospitals are treating more severely ill patients requiring oxygen than at any other point during the pandemic. Another grim milestone was reached on April 27 when a record 201 deaths were registered in a single day. At one point, 90 percent of the country’s oxygen supply was in use.

Pakistan finds itself teetering on the brink as the holy month of Ramadan closes and the Eid al-Fitr holidays approach. Spooked by the daily COVID-19 horror show next door in India, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government is taking preventative measures to curb a cataclysmic third wave. But it faces formidable headwinds: pandemic fatigue, population density, relaxed Ramadan restrictions, contagious variants, limited genomic surveillance capabilities, a glacial vaccine campaign, and a starved healthcare infrastructure. As Federal Minister Asad Umar, who helms the nation’s pandemic response, tweeted on May 8, “Danger is higher than ever and knocking at our doors.”

Unlike much of the world, Pakistan’s first two waves of the pandemic were much milder than experts forecasted. Many theories, none conclusively proven, have emerged on why the country remained mostly unscathed. But India’s story shows the limits of these supposed inherent advantages. “We now know that it was wishful thinking that populations in the subcontinent have some underlying protection from rapid spread and high mortality,” wrote Mishal Khan, an associate professor in the Faculty of Public Health and Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

While Pakistan’s more forgiving first waves spared lives, they also defanged the virus in the minds of the public. A Gallup poll from May 5 found that 64 percent of citizens thought the coronavirus threat was exaggerated. The complacency and outright COVID-19 denial have led many to flout critical and proven public health measures, referred to as Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), such as masking and distancing in all corners of the country. “The average Pakistani is not wearing masks. I was just in Pakistan, and I think one out of ten would wear a mask,” said Ayesha Jalal, a historian and professor at Tufts University. “You’re really rejecting science by not accepting the basics.”

Though the army has been enlisted by the government to aid the police and law enforcement agencies in enforcing SOPs, the religious conservatives remain recalcitrant and unapologetic as mosques teemed with adherents during Ramadan and thousands of people went without masks in Shia religious processions.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/13/india-covid-surge-pakistan-unvaccinated/